I was getting ready for a moon sketch when two little sketches from the last season fell out on the floor. Clouds were too dense to observe but I was looking through one small hole where I had done those spring sketches--still appreciating the little circle of stars called Corona Borealis. I always use it and use it with classes as a pointer to M13. I tell the children to imagine the game called crack-the-whip, where a group of children link arms and rotate about one end of the line until the last child, who is moving the fastest, is flung off. The little constellation starts tight (in my view) and ends with an arm a little stretched out that, if extended, runs into side of the Hercules square with M13, like a child at the end of crack-the-whip. Anyway, the constellation acts as a pointer and keeps me from getting lost, which is not an infrequent occurrence. So many things in the skies are pointers, and, in the largest sense, this is also the meaning of the first few verses of Psalm 19, since the heavens point to their creator.

As a technical note, orientation of these sketches may seem a bit strange but one sets up the sky window and a chair to point in a general compass direction, which I did. Then I sketch the up/down reversed scene (the skywindow reverses the vertical). The sketches are placed in relative seating direction when I sketched, so don't read anything else into their orientation. They are put together because I frequently observe and enjoy them together.

Thanks all. Actually, I am surprised it is not commonly talked about as a pointer since I am usually slow to catch on to where things are and how to find them. In any case, glad to suggest it...it sure has been handy to keep me straight.